Blog : Strand Cigarette Man vents about the scene

Welcome to AROnline‘s newest blogger – a motoring rotter who wants to tell it like it is. He’s the Strand Cigarette Man…

This week, he turns his keyboard angrily in the direction of the banger racers…


Good Afternoon

The Strand Cigarette Man lays into the classic car scene's unsavoury characters...
The Strand Cigarette Man lays into the classic car scene’s unsavoury characters…

what a bunch of absolute tossers i had to email the geezer who runs the forum and tell him that i just love to wreck old tin and that im gonna burn all my intirior parts and stuff not needed in bangers from now on instead of offering up free spares to these anorach do gooders”.

This is one of the more articulate entries to be found on ovalbangerchat.co.uk, one of the most hilarious sites on the entire Internet.  It is as though a random assortment of train spotters with sociopathic tendencies and a strange BDSM-like passion for Austin A99 Westminster wrecking. Their mortal foes – anyone with a reasoned argument against their favourite quasi-sexual habits in involving dead Humber Hawks and an IQ in three figures.

Chaps such as the great writer Nick Larkin for example:
and hes a bus nerd/freak,says it all dont it?and my poor boys car spread over the mag too,thats cool

Yes, the oval bangers defend their sport with wit and verve, so raising the standard of debate is a considerable challenge but one I feel sure that we are all capable of. The first reader of this blog who manages to sustain a discussion on oval banger chat concerning the relationship between Wolseley 6/110 destruction and Hegelian dialectics for more than one page &/or  the heads of the forum ‘grand member’s’ exploding with the infernal logic of it wins a ¼lb of Trebor pear drops!

And for any oval banger forum members who are having this blog read to them – it is little more advanced than The Beano after all – well, I  feel certain that you’ll see the funny side. After all, you do state that you are such salt of the earth types with a jovial sense of humour. Repeatedly…

Until next time,

I Remain

The Strand Cigarette Man

Keith Adams

11 Comments

  1. Ah, Nick Larkin. I once sold him an Opel Manta and got a rather lovely Vauxhall Victor in part-ex; sadly the Manta wasn’t to his taste and failed to grace the pages of Practically-Classics for long.

    Still, I bet the Victor would have looked amazing sailing around the track fending off beaten up old Jags…

    (I kid. It ended up scrapped after no garage would undertake the simple task of welding up a rear sill and swapping the back axle from my rotten VX1800 and I had to admit defeat. Banger racing would have been a relative blaze of glory for it AND I bet those lads would’ve had those axles swapped over faster than you can say “where’s my plasma cutter?”)

  2. But those ‘ladss, judging by oval banger chat, would not be able to even spell the work ‘plasma’..

  3. Two things to say on this.
    1st this Strand Cigarette Man is crap and spoils the site.
    2nd. Back in the late 70s early 80s I used to banger race. I had to buy my cars. This means that they were ALL MOT failures on the cheap from the small adds, often with knackered engines. But most important of all if you wanted to “save” them you could of bought them yourself.

  4. if “dib” is real, zip up your anorak and find another site. Having read some comments regarding clubs & registers recently I can’t blame Keith Adams for allowing the Strand Cigarette Man to appear.

  5. The Hegelian dialectic (an ideological conflict or contradiction)applicable to banger racing in an ideological / material sense, posits the cultural values of the “old” against “the new”. “The Old” in this context can superficially be viewed as importing values of disposability but this simplistic view is tempered with a paradoxical appreciation of “The Old” ie bangers, albeit in the narrow sense of a specific entertainment value derived from their destruction. The wider appreciation of vehicles for their cultural/engineering value is missing, and this is the source of the conflict. The contradiction emerges from the value that is attached to vehicles of over thirty years old as candidates for destruction; a legitimate quetion may therefore be put as to why those vehicles in particular. Engineering simplicity might be put forward as such a reason but this is counterbalanced by the centrality of the cultural / nostalgic values placed upon such vehicles.
    Can I have the pear drops please ?

  6. Nick Larkin isn’t a full schilling. At one point he rand a mate of mine up regularly, and would waffle on for hours about stuff. He also has buses dotted all over the place, that are simply rotting away. Why he doesn’t sell em off to someone who may restore them, or use them as donors I will never, ever know.

    And yes I have met the bloke….

  7. I have mixed feelings about banger racing and, if it uses cars which are beyond restoration and have had those parts that are able to be recycled its fine but when low value but good cars are used I am concerned.

    It is interesting how it seems that a fair number of articles in the magazines relating to the lower value classic car market which seem to have owners of pristine cars stating that they got interested in the car having first banger raced them.

    Now if I could use my personal automotive bias to choose what gets banger raced that would be a good thing.

  8. What an astoundingly ignorant piece of text that is!

    Being clever and learned is no great acheivement. Looking down your nose at banger racing in this way is a cheap shot at the working classes, a group that all of us rely on to a very large extent. Banger racing may not be cerebrally challenging but it is huge fun and very exciting. The atmosphere and comradery in the pits provide a pleasant alternative to the day to day hostility one often encounters. The challenge of repairing and rebuilding ones damaged vehicle in a small amount of time is not easily matched nor is the satisfaction of getting back out on track for another race. I would go on but I fear your position is so entrenched that my time would be better spent elsewhere. Sir you have my sympathy, you poor thing.

  9. The unfortunate situation for you and your extremely eloquent friends is that banger racers, of which I am a proud ‘member’ do have a jovial sense of humour, we are the salts of the earth and we pay our money and make or choice (to quote a rather well known song). If you guys were willing to pay your money and make the choice to save these automotive relics then you wouldn’t have a reason to be so upset by our actions!

    Deep pockets, short arms and big mouths.

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